Quality management presents a diverse set of concepts, practices and techniques that can be utilized by companies to gain or maintain competitiveness when facing an economic and technologic landscape in constant change. This landscape made quality management evolve quite significantly during the XX and XXI centuries, going through different quality eras. However, the implementations of these concepts, practices and techniques not always produce positive results, or the results obtained are lost in the long term. As a way to better understand the implementation and success of quality management programs, a pluralist view is used, taking account of distinct organizational culture profiles in companies. It is also considered the expected performance of the quality management by the organizational strategy, as a context factor to understand the role of quality management in the studied companies, with the objective of attaining a greater understanding of the influence that quality management exerts upon the organizational culture. The following study is based on a literature review followed by case studies in Brazilian companies as a way to identify the effects the quality management elements of an organization influence upon its organizational culture. For that, a pluralist view on quality management is used, taking account of distinct organizational culture profiles in companies. Organizational culture was considered according to the Competing Values Framework (CVF) dimensions, both from Organizational Culture Assesment Instrument (OCAI) questionnaires and interviews. From the studies presented, it is observed a tendency that quality management elements drive the organizational culture to be focused in aspects related to control, while the focus between internal or external needs seem to be related to the objectives behind the adoption of such quality management elements. Furthermore, the influences detected were not strong enough to indicate a need of radical change of an organizations' organizational culture for the success of quality management elements.

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